


Holding all the Kings

by thethirdmuse



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: An abundance of love for Kosmo, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Lance (Voltron) Has ADHD, M/M, Minor Injuries, Mutual Pining, POV Keith (Voltron), POV Lance (Voltron), POV Pidge | Katie Holt, Quantum Abyss (Voltron), older klance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-08-20 19:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16561694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thethirdmuse/pseuds/thethirdmuse
Summary: The chattering picks up again, and Krolia and Kolivan are exchanging a look.“I’ll go,” someone finally says. Everyone turns to look at the source.Lance has pulled his hands out of his pockets, but they’re still hanging limply at his sides. He stares straight ahead, not breaking eye contact with the two Marmorites projected above the control room. For a second, no one says anything. Then Hunk starts to laugh.“Good one, buddy,” he says, snorting a little. Pidge wants to laugh as well, if only to show Lance that he’d successfully broken up the tension. But Lance doesn’t smile back at Hunk, doesn’t even look at him.He’s not joking, Pidge realizes with a jolt.~Or, the one where Lance volunteers for a mission and ends up stuck on the space whale with Keith





	1. beginning

**Author's Note:**

> >   
> Title comes from "That Sea, The Gambler" by Gregory Alan Isakov, aka my go-to Klance song for reasons I cannot explain. Unbeta'd, so feel free to point out any mistakes or inaccuracies.  
> 

Pidge, not that anyone is really listening to her over all the shouting, thinks it’s a terrible idea. It’s a brand of reckless that is so particular to Keith, which is of course why he’s championing this mission in the first place. Following a set of stolen coordinates to find an unstable, unsafe, and unknown quintessence source. Superb. The safest.

The former Red Paladin himself is front and center in the control room, arguing with a clearly exasperated Shiro over who will be accompanying him. Shiro is insisting that he’s perfectly able to go, because the man simply doesn’t understand the meaning of the word rest, and Keith’s arms are already crossed tightly over his chest.

Pidge looks around at the rest of the paladins, scattered around the control room in varying stages of dismay. Hunk and Coran are squabbling over the logistics of the trip, how to pack, what to pack, if food goo is easily transported, etc. Allura is interjecting into Keith and Shiro’s conversation, gently trying to ease the ever-growing tension between the two paladins. From the projected holo-screen at the console, Kolivan and Krolia, who’s apparently Keith’s long-lost Galra mother, are watching the Voltron team with impassive faces.

Lance is hiding in the back, hands stuffed into his jacket pockets and feet kicking at the floor. He’s uncharacteristically quiet, and doesn’t even look around to meet Pidge’s eyes. Pidge’s eyebrows pull together in confusion at him, and she’s about to call him over when Kolivan clears his throat.

“We sent Keith back with the intention that he would prepare at the castleship and leave for the mission soon,” he intones, pointedly making eye contact with his smallest Blade member. Keith ducks his head, clearly embarrassed if the rosiness of his cheeks is anything to go by.

“If I had suspected it would take this long for him to pick a companion, I would have just gone with him myself,” Krolia says, and though her voice is calm, Pidge recoils slightly at the clear exasperation on her face. They hadn’t even known she existed half a varga ago, and she probably already thinks they’re incompetent. Pidge can’t really fault her for it, considering how quickly the team descended into chaos. _How does Allura take us anywhere_ , Pidge thinks idly.

Keith starts to defend himself, which Shiro takes as the perfect opportunity to point out how easy this would all be if Keith would just let him come with. The chattering picks up again, and Krolia and Kolivan are exchanging a look.

“I’ll go,” someone finally says. Everyone turns to look at the source.

Lance has pulled his hands out of his pockets, but they’re still hanging limply at his sides. He stares straight ahead, not breaking eye contact with the two Marmorites projected above the control room. For a second, no one says anything. Then Hunk starts to laugh.

“Good one, buddy,” he says, snorting a little. Pidge wants to laugh as well, if only to show Lance that he’d successfully broken up the tension. But Lance doesn’t smile back at Hunk, doesn’t even look at him. _He’s not joking_ , Pidge realizes with a jolt.

“Lance,” Allura says, stepping towards him. “Are you really sure that’s the best course of action?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” he replies, finally pulling his eyes away from the screen to meet the Princess’ inquiring look.

“You can’t be serious, Lance,” Pidge says, the words tumbling off her tongue before she can stop them. “You _hate_ Keith!”

“No,” Lance says. “I don’t.”

In her peripherals, she sees Keith shifting uncomfortably between his feet. Pidge is pretty sure he wants to be anywhere but here. If given another couple of minutes, he might take off running.

Lance continues before anyone else has the nerve to speak up. “Keith and I worked just fine together when he was piloting Black.”

“Yeah, but you still had the rest of us around,” Hunk says. “You know, to buffer.”

Lance shakes his head. “Listen, it makes the most sense. Keith’ll stick to short range defense tactics, and I’ll be long range. It’s not like I’m doing anything important around here anyway. I can’t help Pidge or Hunk with any science-y stuff, and Allura and Shiro are the best at being diplomats. I can’t even fly the castleship with Coran. I’m not contributing anything right now. At least if I go on this mission, I will be.”

Pidge’s chest twinges at his words. He sounds so beaten down. Not at all the obnoxiously cheery Lance she’s used to. Does he really think that?

“We can’t just lose a Paladin for that long. What if we need Voltron?” Shiro says, striding over to where Lance is standing to grip his shoulder.

“And how would you going solve that problem? You’re literally the head of Voltron!” Lance replies. Hunk gasps dramatically.

“Ooh, he’s right, Shiro! We can’t be a mecha-super-lion without a lion head!”

Shiro sighs.

“We’re supposed to be working with Prince Lotor right now,” Lance adds, shrugging the hand off. “I can’t imagine we’ll need Voltron for the next few weeks he’ll be around.”

“Lance, you’re correct. But it’s not right if you’re only going because no one else can. We should be sending the best person for this kind of mission,” Shiro finally says. Lance narrows his eyes and opens his mouth reply, but is immediately cut off by another voice.

“Truthfully, the mission is reconnaissance-centered. If all goes well, it shouldn’t take more than a phoeb to accomplish, nor should it require a specific skill-set,” Krolia interjects.

“A phoeb? That’s over a month in Earth time!” Pidge squawks. Lance is nonplussed, and defers all attention to Allura.

The Princess is worrying her bottom lip between her teeth, something Pidge has only seen her do a few times, when she’s really thinking hard about something. Her gaze flits back and forth from Lance to Keith. At last, she settles on former Red Paladin.

“Keith, you’ve remained quite silent through all this,” she says. He straightens up, arms falling away to his sides. Pidge watches him glance at Lance for a split second, then immediately bounce back to Allura.

“Uh, yeah. That seems fine,” he replies, voice scratchy and quiet. Shiro whips his head around to look at his adopted sibling with bewilderment. Pidge feels her own expression mirroring it. Keith is _willingly_ going on a mission with _Lance_? What kind of reality did they unknowingly cross into?

“You’re alright with Lance accompanying you?” Allura gently asks. Keith shifts his shoulders, clearly uncomfortable.

“He’s right. It’s the best option we have.”

Pidge pinches herself, just to check. Hunk has started patting his cheeks with his hands, as if he’s waking himself up from a dream.

Lance, however, grins for the first time that evening. “I knew it! I have been growing on you!”

“Don’t ruin it,” Keith says immediately, grimacing at Lance. It’s not enough to quell the excitement clearly bubbling under Lance’s features.

Coran claps his hands together excitedly, drawing all eyes to him.

“That settles it! Lance, Keith, you’ll both have to come with me and pick out your own climbing suits!”

Hunk meets Pidge’s gaze from across the room. _Climbing suits_? He mouths. Pidge shrugs.

“Be sure to inform us of your departure,” Kolivan says. Keith is nodding in response, and exchanging a few rapid-fire sentences with Krolia that Pidge can’t quite catch as Coran begins to usher her and Hunk out of the control room.

“We’ve no time to waste!” Coran is saying, a hand clamped on either Paladin’s shoulder. “While they work out the details, we should pack. The pod must be fully prepped in case of emergency.”

Pidge looks over her shoulder, ready to plead with any of the other team members to rescue her from Coran’s enthusiasm, but everyone else is preoccupied. Shiro is studying a rapidly blushing Keith, who refuses to look anywhere but the floor, while Allura is speaking to Lance in low tones, a serious expression painting her features. Coran has them out the door before Pidge can even think to call out for help.

~

With the decision that Lance and Keith will seek out the quintessence source while the team plays nice with Lotor, there isn’t really any time to waste. The transport shuttle they’ll be taking is stocked and prepped within a few vargas. It feels like Pidge hasn’t even blinked once before they’re all gathered in the hangar to see the boys off.

Shiro is gripping Keith’s shoulders, his brows drawn inwards and the corners his mouth tight with worry. Keith grips Shiro’s wrist, his fingers digging tightly into flesh hard enough to bruise. He gives Shiro the smallest smile, and Pidge feels like she’s intruding on an important family moment, so she looks away.

To Pidge’s immediate right, Hunk has Lance gripped so tightly that his feet are kicking in the air.

“Don’t die out there. Don’t let Keith die out there. And don’t forget to eat and stay hydrated!” He’s frantically saying. Lance chuckles and pats Hunk’s arm reassuringly. When he’s free from Hunk’s crushing grip, Lance slings his arm around Pidge’s shoulder and musses up her hair. Pidge shoves his hand away, trying to duck out of Lance’s long reach.

“Pidgey, I expect you to watch after Allura for me,” Lance says, plastering on his classic grin. There are a lot of things Pidge could say in response, but she settles on rolling her eyes.

After a few tearful (Coran) and not-so-tearful (everyone else) goodbyes, Keith and Lance ascend the ramp. The door shutters closed behind them.

Hunk sets his hands on his hips, drifting closer to Pidge as the team watches the pod fire up.

“This is going to be a disaster,” Hunk says. Pidge snorts.

“Most likely,” Allura agrees, with a forlorn sigh. The five of them watch silently as the pod glides out of the hangar doors, before they all begin to drift off to their own activities again, no doubt prepping for the oncoming reunion with Lotor. Pidge is unable to shake the feeling that Keith and Lance won’t return as the same people they were when they left. It’s a silly, illogical thought, and Pidge can’t quite pinpoint where the fear is coming from. She stays in the hangar, long after the shuttle has disappeared into the inky darkness of space, and hopes that the mission will be over soon.

 

Lance realizes, belatedly, that a transport shuttle doesn’t have much to go on in the realm of entertainment. When the shuttle door had slid closed behind him and Keith, the shorter boy had immediately started towards the pilot’s seat, before pausing stiffly and looking back at Lance.

“You good, man?” Lance had asked, striding over towards one of the passengers benches and plopping down on it with a sigh.

“No complaints? You’re going to just let me fly?” Keith asked, forehead wrinkling in confusion. Lance grinned impishly and gestured towards the pilot’s seat.

“All yours, Samurai,” Lance said. He threw his legs up on the bench and stretched his body out over the full length of it, settling in with a mock-sigh of comfort.

Keith had stared at him for several seconds more, as if he couldn’t quite believe that Lance was conceding so easily, before shrugging and sliding into the seat. The past several vargas of the trip had passed with nothing of consequence, and Lance had staved off the boredom for as long as he could.

He’d already reorganized both packs, gone through the first aid supplies and counted everything, and sprawled across every available surface of the cabin. There was only so much to do in a confined shuttle, hurtling through the middle-of-nowhere-space. So he was getting a little antsy.

“Are you physically incapable of staying still?” Keith asks, monotone, from the pilot’s seat. Lance freezes, lying upside on the bench, feet still pressed against the wall where he’d been tapping them.

“Honestly?” he says, after considering the question. “Yeah, kind of.”

“Whatever,” Keith replies, not even sparing a glance over his shoulder.

Lance frowns. “They don’t exactly sell space-Adderall on every other asteroid, dude. I’m doing my best. I’ll try to stay still, I guess.”

Keith is silent. Silent for long enough that Lance figures he’s just ignoring him now. Then, almost too quiet for Lance to hear, Keith speaks.

“Adderall?”

“Yeah. ADHD medication? I didn’t exactly remember to bring the bottle up to space with me.” Lance pulls himself upright to stare at the black hair poking out from the edges of the seat. He still doesn’t understand the physics of that mullet.

“I know what it is, I just didn’t realize you needed it,” Keith says. Lance laughs.

“You couldn’t tell from a mile away? Pidge always tells me I’m the poster-boy for ADHD.” He stands, twisting his torso this way and that to stretch, then folds himself into the seat next to Keith, who doesn’t acknowledge his proximity. “I don’t think it’s fun to be the obnoxious one. I’m not like this to like, purposely annoy you guys. My brain-to-mouth filter doesn’t function the same way, y’know?”

“I guess I just didn’t think about it,” Keith says, still not glancing Lance’s way. He shrugs a shoulder and tightens his grip on the steering controls. “Sorry for snapping.”

Lance blinks. Looks over his shoulder to see exactly who Keith is talking to, because there’s no way it’s actually him. Keith sees the movement in his peripherals and rolls his eyes.

“Look, we’re going to be stuck in here together for the next two weeks at least. We might as well try to get along,” he mumbles. Lance hums in response.

“No, you’re right. Just surprised me, I guess.”

“I’m not going to say it again.”

“I’m not asking you to, jeez!” Lance says, throwing his hands up. This is…weird. Totally weird. It’s been months since he’s had a regular conversation with Keith, and ever since he realized that he – well, he wasn’t going to think about that while alone with Keith. In a confined space. Sharing the same air. Lance kicks his feet out onto the console and slaps his hands loudly against his thighs. Keith sends a glare his way. Perfect. Lance can deal with an annoyed Keith better than he can deal with his own feelings.

Neither speaks again for a few minutes, the only sound between them the humming of the shuttle and the quiet beeping of the navigation. Lance drops his legs back down and leans toward the navigation holo, tracking the triangle icon of the shuttle with his eyes.

“So, do you know where we’re going?” he asks.

Keith nods once. “Krolia said that she’d been tracking the quintessence source for some time. Part of her undercover mission. She was on this general, Ranveig’s, base when they discovered a lead, so we’re chasing that.” Keith’s mouth tightens as his finishes explaining, and Lance takes a moment to study his face. He seems impossibly paler, after all that time hidden behind his Marmora mask, and his eyes have deep shadows beneath them. Working for Kolivan and the Blades has clearly taken a toll on Keith’s health.

“Why didn’t your mom want to come with?” Lance asks. Krolia had been clear in the transmission that she had other things to attend to, hence the Blades sending Keith back to the Castle of Lions for backup.

“She wanted to, but she had to report back to Kolivan about Ranveig’s weapon. She said something when we were fleeing the base, something about giving the other general to the weapon, not the other way around,” Keith says voice growing quieter and more stilted as he continues. “I don’t know what the weapon is, but it sounded dangerous. Krolia stayed behind to help Kolivan deal with it.”

“And now we get to find the quintessence that made something that dangerous. Great.”

“You volunteered,” Keith reminds him.

“I know,” Lance says, shifting in his seat uncomfortably. “And I still think it was the right decision. This is just going to be difficult.”

“As long as we stick to the path coordinates Krolia gave us, we’ll be fine.” Keith replies.

“Is it weird?” Lance asks. Keith tilts his head slightly, dark brows drawing together in confusion.

“Following the coordinates?” he asks.

Lance snorts. “No. Knowing Krolia is your mom. Your missing Galra mom! Who would’ve thought you’d actually find her so quickly?”

Keith stiffens immediately. _Great_ , Lance thinks, _there’s that stellar brain-to-mouth filter you mentioned at work_. But Keith doesn’t look ready to throw any punches, more like he’s fighting his own tongue to find the right words.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Lance says quietly. “If you don’t want to.”

“I...I guess I don’t know how I feel,” Keith says. He flexes his fingers, fanning them out around the steering controls. His hands are completely covered by the Blade suit he’s still wearing, and Lance almost misses the pale skin that would poke out in those dumb fingerless gloves he used to wear. He turns away from Keith quickly, not wanting to chase that trail of thought, to stare at his own gloved hands. Allura had insisted he wear his Paladin armor rather than a plain flight suit, just in case. He was glad for the familiarity.

“Probably doesn’t feel real yet, huh?” Lance asks. Keith shakes his head. “It’s still cool, though.”

“I guess,” Keith says. Lance can hear the way Keith is beginning to shut down, not wanting to dwell on the subject any longer, but can’t stop the question from leaving his lips.

“Did you guys talk at all? Like, did you get to ask why she left or get some sort of explanation?” Lance could imagine it in his head; fiery Keith, demanding to know her whereabouts for the past un-teenth years, with the same stubborn disapproval in his eyes whenever Lance made an poorly-timed joke. He also knows the reality of it, the quieter Keith that probably didn’t say a word to Krolia unless prompted.

“She wanted to, on the way back to base,” Keith answers, shoulders drawing inwards. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

 _When do you ever_? Lance thinks. But he clamps down on the thought to keep it in place, and instead says, “That’s fine, man. Just…checking, I guess. That you’re alright.”

“I’m fine,” Keith says quickly. Lance bobs his head in response, _thinks this is fine, everything is fine. We can do this._

Which is, of course, when the cluster of swirling planets comes into view and the ship begins to wobble.

It’s hardly been a full day when Allura calls everyone to the control room to view a transmission from the boys. Pidge takes off running, Hunk stumbling after with a shout. When they arrive, the remaining team members are already waiting. Allura’s face is tight with worry.

“What’s wrong?” Pidge asks, freezing in place. Hunk isn’t prepared for the sudden stop and crashes into her, nearly taking both of them to the floor. They steady themselves, and Hunk begins to panic, tapping his fingers together rapidly. 

“They’re dead already, aren’t they?” he cries.

“They’re not dead, Hunk,” Shiro reassures, holding his hands out like he has to placate an agitated wild animal. The air whooshes audibly out of Hunk’s lungs as he sags forward in relief.

“They simply sent an early transmission recording,” Coran says, stroking the corners of his mustache. “Only a little early, nothing to fear.”

“It is in everyone’s best interests to view it and respond quickly, however,” Allura adds. “We are due to meet Prince Lotor shortly.”

“Play away,” Pidge replies. Allura taps a single button, and a holo screen unfolds itself to display Lance’s bleeding face. Everyone jolts at the sight, and Pidge unconsciously steps toward Hunk, who lets out a distressed gasp.

“ _This looks worse than it actually is_ ,” is the first thing out of holo-Lance’s mouth. There’s a scratch along his forehead, the source of the blood, but he looks otherwise unscathed. The scenery is dark behind, and it’s impossible to tell exactly where he is.

“ _Liar_ ,” a voice accuses off-screen. Lance turns to scowl at the source.

“ _Shut up, Keith_!” he whisper-yells. Keith’s face slides into frame, looking grimy and sweaty, but without any dripping lacerations, so he’s clearly in a better state.

“ _Lance has a concussion, but he’s just as annoying as usual, so it must not be a bad one_.” Keith’s voice is biting, but his lips draw into a tight line. If Pidge didn’t know any better, she’d say he almost looked concerned.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Lance continues, ignoring the other boy. “ _We’ve hit a small bump in the plan. But it’s all fine! Nothing we can’t handle! We just won’t be able to transmit messages as often_.”

“ _We’re still following the coordinates from Krolia. We’ll check in when we can_ ,” Keith promises. “ _But please relay this message to Kolivan_.”

“ _And with that, we’ll be ending the message. Your best and most capable paladins have a mission to complete_.” Lance punctuates himself with a wink. Keith rolls his eyes and leans across Lance to shut the transmitter off.

“I knew this was going to be a disaster,” Hunk cries, dropping his face into his hands. Pidge pats him on the back, but knows it’s doing little to comfort.

“Princess? Should we go retrieve them? I can ready a pod or Black,” Shiro says. Allura shakes her head.

“One absent paladin is problem enough. We’ve already assured the Blades of Marmora we would keep a careful eye on Prince Lotor.” She glances at Coran, who’s begun fiddling with the console. “I’m not sure we have the time or manpower to spare.”

“And it looks like Prince Lotor is hailing us now, Princess,” Coran chimes. Allura sighs, placing a hand to her forehead.

“We must not give him a reason to be suspicious. For now, we’ll trust Keith and Lance to continue the mission as planned. Should the situation worsen, we’ll reconsider our options.”

“Rightly said, ‘Lura,” Coran murmurs in an attempt to comfort. Pidge can see that the gears in Allura’s brain are still turning. The Princess isn’t pleased with the decision she’s been stuck with, but there isn’t much they can do at the moment.

The remaining Paladins nod, fading quietly into the background as she spins to accept Lotor’s call. The sinking feeling in Pidge’s stomach that they’re resigning Lance and Keith to some terrible fate hasn’t gone away. It only increases as she watches Allura smile gently at the prince on the holo-screen.

Hunk is biting at his thumb, still shaken up from the transmission. Pidge slides a step closer to him and digs her elbow into his side. He makes a wounded noise, causing Shiro to pass them a stern look.

“They’ll be fine,” Pidge mumbles. Hunk shakes his head.

“I don’t know, man,” Hunk whispers back. “They don’t exactly know how to play nice with each other.”

Well, isn’t that the truth. Pidge bites her tongue, still searching for the right words.

“This could be the mission that changes that,” she says at last. Hunk looks about as convinced as Pidge feels on the inside.

“God, I hope so,” Hunk replies. Pidge finds that she’s begun chewing on the tip of her thumb without realizing her hand had moved, an anxious habit. She quickly wipes her hands on her pants and distracts herself by focusing on the suspicious look Hunk is fixing on Lotor’s holo-face as the purple man converses with Allura. It’ll all turn out fine. Lance and Keith are mostly capable, she reassures herself. Mostly.

 

The ship’s wobble is easily managed by Keith’s deft flying, but Lance is still a little freaked out by the motion.

“That doesn’t seem good, does it?” he asks. Keith, ever the wordsmith, only grunts in response.

According to the navigation system, their shuttle is still right on track. Lance shoves the panic back down, and focuses instead on the view in front of him. If the circumstances were a little different, Lance would have to admit it’s quite a beautiful sight, really. The asteroids and space matter all being pulled towards one central location, a dark planet emitting a golden haze of light in a ring around it. Upon closer inspection, it seems as if whole other planets are being ripped apart and broken the closer they get to the central planet.

With this observation, Lance’s fear spikes again. Great. They’re headed right towards an epicenter of planetary destruction.

There’s a sudden slam from above their heads, and the shuttle jerks violently with it. Both shuttle passengers look to the ceiling, then to each other.

“What was that?” Lance asks.

“I don’t know,” Keith answers, through gritted teeth. He refocuses his attention on piloting, while Lance stands up, lifting a hand towards the ceiling as if he could feel the damage from underneath. Maybe some stray space debris collided with them?

Two more clanging noises erupt from points on the shuttle. There’s a scuttling sound, and when Lance turns around, there’s a very large eye peering down at them through the shuttle’s windshield.

Lance absolutely does not scream. Well, maybe he does, but it’s a very manly scream. Right.

Keith jerks the whole shuttle to the side, attempting to shake the large eye-bug-thing off of them. Lance figures it’s safe to assume that the other two noises were just more of the same creature, but as soon as he thinks it, two more clang down onto the roof. Keith swears under his breath.

“This is bad,” Lance says.

“I noticed,” Keith says, jerking the shuttle to the other side. Lance topples into the wall. The eye-bug on the windshield has decided that it would like to join their shuttle crew and begins to ram its entire body against the window.

Lance steadies himself, thinks _shit_ , and is immediately thrown to the ground again as Keith continues to pilot wildly.

“A little warning next time!” Lance says, from the ground. A second creature joins their buddy on the window.

“I can’t shake them,” Keith says, ignoring the request. Lance crawls towards their packs and attempts to find his helmet, to no avail. From outside the shuttle, Lance hears a loud crunch.

The shuttle starts spinning wildly. Lance manages to grip one of the packs and hug it close to his body as he’s tossed around the cabin. At the windshield, the efforts of the eye-bugs has paid off as a crack spider-webs itself across the surface.

“We need to get out of here,” Lance yells. Keith is glued to his seat with the force of the shuttle’s rotations, but he manages to glance back at Lance with exasperation.

“How?” And oh boy, if only Lance had an answer to that question.

The shuttle’s spinning is abruptly stopped as they crash into the surface of something.

Lance is thrown towards the windshield and then all he can register is pain, sharp and stinging across his face and body. He lands on something soft and spongy, sinking into the texture as his head pounds hard. He tries to fling his arms out and prop himself up, but he can’t exactly tell where his arms are. Or his legs, for that matter. Panic threatens to well up inside his chest at the lack of feeling, but before his lungs can start heaving, black crowds in at the corner of his vision and he’s overtaken by unconsciousness.

~

“-nce! Lance, wake up!”

Hands are gripping his shoulders, shaking him roughly. He bats at them with a limp hand, scrunching his eyes closed.

The voice returns, saying, “Lance, I swear to god, you better open your eyes.”

The speaker sounds grumpy and Lance is reluctant to admit that he recognizes the lilt and tone immediately. He can’t help but obey the request, and pries his eyes open.

Keith is looming above him, tendrils of hair clinging to his sweaty face and hanging down far enough to brush Lance’s chin.

“Stop shaking me so much, Mullet,” Lance says. And holy shit, is his voice really that rough? Keith sits back on his heels with a relieved sigh, giving Lance enough space to sit up.

They’re in a forest? Lance rubs his eyes, but is greeted by the same confusing scenery when he opens them. There are stubby, short trees surrounding them, tinted blue-green, and the ground beneath Lance shudders mildly. Over Keith’s shoulder, Lance can see the smoldering rubble of their transport shuttle, half-buried in the ground, which almost looks a bit flesh-like.

“What the hell,” Lance says.

Keith sighs. “We got knocked pretty far off course. I managed to crash us on to some sort of traveling creature, which is luckily heading right to where we were.”

“What the hell,” Lance repeats. Keith fixes him with a tired look. Lance tries to twist his face up in response, but when his skin pulls, his forehead stings painfully. He hisses, reaching a hand up to the spot. Keith grabs his wrist, stopping his fingers just a few centimeters from his forehead.

“You have a cut on your forehead. I wouldn’t touch it,” he explains.

Lance wriggles out of Keith’s grip and touches it anyway. The immediate pain causes Lance to hiss again, and when he pulls his fingers away, they’re coated in blood.

“That’s not good,” he says, staring in at the patchy redness staining his fingers. Keith huffs angrily.

“Idiot,” he says, pulling Lance’s hand close. He pulls a wet towelette, seemingly out of nowhere until Lance’s eyes focus enough to see that yes, one of the first aid kits is open next to him, and wipes the blood off with surprising gentleness. Once his hand is clean, Lance holds it out for the towelette and lightly dabs at his forehead with it.

“Y’know, this would be easier with a mirror,” he says, dabbing aimlessly and with little intent.

“You’re just smearing the blood all over your forehead. And the cut is still bleeding, so that’s not helping,” Keith tells him.

“Yeah, well, you’re not helping either!” Lance says, then lets his whole body deflate in a defeated slump. “Sorry.”

“You’re probably concussed,” is Keith’s only reply. Lance thinks back to that time in middle school, when a basketball rebounded just right and smacked him square in the face. His brain had felt jumbled for the next week, and looking at his math homework had made him actually cry. He compares the feeling then to the mess of his brain now and nods.

“Oh yeah, definitely,” he agrees. Keith’s mouth is a tight line.

“We can’t leave yet,” Keith says, readying to fight for the mission.

“No, definitely not. So let’s not let everyone know how bad the damage actually is,” Lance replies, nodding his head towards the object formerly known as the shuttle.

Keith blinks slowly. “What?”

“Well, I figure we need to at least let the team know that _something_ happened, but so long as we don’t give them all the details, they can’t pull us.” Lance peers around the wreckage for the pack with the modified communicator Pidge had sent with them. He spots the pack upended in a vaguely hair-like bush and rolls onto his knees to begin shuffling towards it.

“You’re okay with going on?” Keith asks, bewildered. Lance shoots a glare over his shoulder as he crawls away at a turtle-pace.

“Why would you say we can’t leave and then get surprised when I agree? How does that work?!”

Keith blinks again, growing wary. “I don’t know, I just figured you’d...I don’t know, that you’d-”

“Tap out this early? No way, dude. This is the first time in months I’ve done anything cool. There’s no way you’re getting rid of me. Now, get over here. I don’t remember Pidge’s exact instructions.” Lance digs the communicator-transmitter-thingy out of the pack and waves it around menacingly. Or at least, in a way he thinks is menacing.

Keith doesn’t move at first, still fighting the shell-shock of actually being in agreement with Lance, for once. But Lance gives the communicator a little flourish in his direction, and Keith snaps back into action, quickly making his way over and grabbing the communicator away. Lance grins triumphantly. He looks around him, taking stock of the weird forest-flesh-animal they’re currently hitching a ride on and sincerely hopes that Keith is ready to lie his _ass_ off. Otherwise, this mission is toast.


	2. the return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team receives another transmission and the boys make adjustments.

It’s not long before the ship disappears into the quintessence field, bearing Lotor and Allura along with it that Shiro leans heavily against the nearest paladin chair. He happens to be near Pidge, so she extends a hand out to him.

“Are you okay, Shiro?” she asks. He looks back at her, smiling through the obvious pain he’s in.

“Just a bad headache. Don’t worry about me,” he tells her. Pidge still shuffles close and bumps arms with him. He straightens up, bumps her arm back, and joins Coran’s side at the center console. 

For the fourteenth time over the past three weeks, Hunk says, “Man, I miss Lance.” 

Pidge is, quite honestly, a little sick of hearing it. She gets it, she misses him too. 

She used to think his constantly babbling and random quips were annoying. Now, she just hates how fast things get quiet and awkward without him to buffer. And she’d rather die than tell anyone she misses him randomly popping in to her lab to check on her and annoy her with food and reminders to sleep, but it’s the truth.

One thing for sure is that whenever Keith and Lance get back, she’s going to beat those idiots up for ever making the team worry.

It’s been nearly two months since they had first left for their mission. Allura’s beginning to run out of reasons to explain Lance’s absence to Lotor, not that she really needs to given how focused the two of them have been on their special ship anyway. But the last transmission they received from the boys had only been a short audio message. And Lance had sounded…weird. His voice had sounded much deeper than Pidge remember, though he was still a little squeaky, and Pidge was sure that the idiot had managed to catch some sort of space flu. 

That had been three weeks ago. Since then, it had been radio silence. 

Not that the boys had been good at checking in before, but they had definitely been more consistent than this. 

So beating them up immediately upon reentering the castle is Pidge’s most immediate and important plan. 

She jolts out of her thoughts, tuning back into Hunk’s worried babble that has somehow moved past the various ways in which Lance and Keith might’ve died to “What if Allura and Lotor get stuck in the quintessence field forever?” Coran is looking a little green at the thought of it, so Pidge is glad to see one of the monitors flashing in the corner of her eye.

“Hey, we have an alert for a ship,” she says, effectively cutting Hunk off. Coran is clearly happy to refocus on pulling up a video feed of the nearing ship. The ship’s shape and design are familiar to Pidge almost immediately, and it only takes her a second to realize – 

“That’s an Altean ship!” Coran says, before frowning. “But Keith’n Lance took a Blade transport, didn’t they?” 

“Yeah,” Hunk says nodding. “That can’t be them.”

“It doesn’t seem to be hostile,” Shiro says. He studies the transport, which Pidge can see is clearly beelining for the castle ship, but making no moves to hide itself or stay out of range of the castle’s potential firing paths. 

A button begins to flash on another screen. “They’re flagging us,” Pidge points out. 

Coran and Shiro exchange a look. 

“Let’s accept it, see what they want,” Shiro says. Coran hums in agreement and taps the flashing button.

A transmission holo appears, with two faces in frame, and Pidge is pretty sure her heart actually stops. 

Because _Keith_ is piloting the transport, and _Lance_ is leaning against the back of the pilots seat with the most serious expression he’s ever had. And they’re _old_. Well, not super old. But they certainly look much older than they did when they left.

“Hailing Voltron,” Lance says, and his voice sounds just as deep as it did the last transmission they received. “This is Lance and Keith, incoming. We have, uh, a bit of an emergency.”

“Where’s Lotor?” Keith says, earning an exasperated look from Lance.

“Keith, Lance,” Shiro says, stumbling over his words. “Uh, what?”

“Lotor is in the quintessence field,” Pidge answers for him. “With Allura.” 

“Shit,” Lance says. Keith’s eyes widen minutely, before narrowing into a hard, unforgiving glare.

“We have to get to them.” His voice is flat. Lance glances down at him worriedly. 

“I’m afraid we have no way of reaching them until they’re out of the quintessence field. Communication or otherwise,” Coran says.

“Is anyone else seeing this? Keith and Lance are definitely older right?” Hunk asks, whirling on the castle inhabitants. 

“Yeah,” Lance says, pressing lips into a line. “We’re definitely older.”

He and Keith exchange a look that contains a full conversation, before Lance looks back at the screen and mumbles a quick, “We’ll explain later.” 

“If we can’t reach Lotor, we’ll need to dock and wait for him on the ship,” Keith says. 

“Opening the hangar bay now,” Shiro says, back in leadership mode. 

“See you soon, then,” Keith says, before immediately cutting off the transmission before more questions are asked. 

“Something’s really wrong,” Pidge says, drawing all eyes to her. 

“Uh, yeah, like the fact that Lance and Keith suddenly look way older? Did you see that weird scar Keith had on one side of his mouth? He didn’t have that before!” Hunk looks ready to faint. 

“Well yeah, that’s obviously something,” Pidge says. 

“But more importantly, something’s up with Lotor,” Shiro says, taking the words right out of Pidge’s mouth. “And it doesn’t sound like a good thing.”

“Aw man, but Lotor’s been pretty cool,” Hunk says. “I just started to like him! Why couldn’t he turn out to be evil before I started to like him!” 

“Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Shiro says. “Just be prepared for anything.” 

Pidge wants so badly for this to be a fluke. For Lotor to not actually be shitty, and Lance and Keith to not actually be as old as they look, and for things to stay as remotely peaceful for everyone the way they have been the past couple of days. 

But given the fact that she’s a paladin of a giant, ancient lion-themed mecha-fighting-robot, there’s no way they’re getting out of this the easy way. 

So she rolls back her shoulders, pops her knuckles, and follows right behind Shiro to greet the boys in the hangar. 

 

Three weeks pass before Lance realizes that they haven’t gotten any closer to their destination. He points this out to Keith, who stares off into the distance with a frown on his face.

“Something’s wrong,” Keith says, after a few minutes of silence.

“Well, no shit, man,” Lance says, collapsing into a heap of awkwardly long limbs and boredom. Keith turns his frown on him. 

“What do you think is happening?” Keith asks. Lance sits back against the cave wall and mentally digs through his space knowledge. 

“Maybe it’s, like, slowing down?” His voice gets higher as he finishes the question, and Keith looks about as confident in that answer as Lance feels.

“What,” he says.

“Time,” Lance answers, “Maybe time is slowing down. Remember our old astro lectures at the garrison? We talked about black holes and stuff, and I think I remember someone saying that time get slower near them. Maybe it’s something like that.” 

“Wait, what?” Keith asks. “You memorized those lectures?” 

“No,” Lance replies. “But I took a shit ton of notes in every class, otherwise I would’ve failed. Do you seriously not remember anything from classes?” 

“I remember the important stuff,” Keith says, shifting uncomfortably. Lance gaps at him.

“You wanted to be a spacepilot, but you didn’t think it would be important to remember things about black holes?” 

“I didn’t want to be anything specific, Lance, I just wanted to fly,” Keith snaps. “So no, I didn’t memorize everything, I just wanted to get off the planet!” 

“Jeez, dude,” says Lance. “You really were a shitty student. No wonder they kicked you out.” 

Keith stands up, kicks the first aid kit over, and storms out of the cave. Lance blinks at the cave entrance briefly, then realizes that that was probably not the best thing to say. 

“Well, shoot,” he mumbles. He gathers what he can of his pride and his ego, and races out after Keith to fix his mistake. 

Keith is standing at the edge of the plant-forest/potentially-space-animal-back hair with his back to their encampment, arms already crossed over his chest. Lance, despite growing up in a house of the lightest sleepers known to man, has never quite managed to walk quietly enough around Keith to sneak up on him. Maybe it’s Galra hearing, or maybe Keith has an innate ability to sense _annoying_ , because he’s not even steps away when Keith says, “Fuck off, Lance.”

Lance startles. “What, you’re not even gonna let me apologize?” 

Without turning around, Keith says, “How do I know you’re actually apologizing and not just coming out to ridicule me more?” 

“Because that would be a dick move,” Lance says.

“And?” 

“And?! And I’m not that much of a dick!”

At this, Keith finally spins to face him. “Yeah, well, you could’ve fooled me!” 

“What’s your problem?” Lance hisses, throwing his arms out in the universal _come at me, bro_ gesture. 

“What’s my problem?” Keith laughs incredulously. “What _your_ problem? You’re the one who has hated me since day one!” 

“I don’t, ugh—“ Lance runs a hand through his hair, tugging at the strands harshly. “I don’t hate you!” 

“Well, you do a great job of making it seem like you do,” Keith says. He strides back towards the cave, shoulder-checking Lance as he passes.

“You can’t keep walking away,” Lance yells, following. 

Keith throws his hand high in the air to flip Lance off. Lance’s resounding squawk is indignant. 

He knows it’s a mistake as soon as he does it, but any shred of impulse control flies out the window: Lance grabs a giant seedpod off a nearby plant and chucks it straight at that stupid mullet. 

It doesn’t miss. 

They’re both still for a moment. Keith turns around achingly slow. His expression is murderous. 

Lance, making what is most definitely the third and worst decision of the night, starts running. Keith follows. 

“I shouldn’t have done that!” Lance screams, taking off into the forest. 

“I’m going to kill you, Lance,” Keith says. Although, it’s really more of a growl, and not one of the teen-romance-bad-boy-growls, but a full on guttural-Galra-growl. Lance is fucking _terrified_. Not at all aroused in the way teen romance novels made him think he’d be. 

Lance prides himself on the fact that he makes it a good twelve minutes into the run for his life before tripping. He has roughly a split second to appreciate this fact from his sprawled position on the ground before Keith pounces on him. 

Keith grips his shoulders and shoves him into the ground, _hard_ , knocking the wind out of him. Lance presses his hands frantically against Keith’s shoulders, trying to shove him off, but knows it’s no use. 

“If you kill me—“ Lance starts yelling.

“Working on it!” Keith interrupts. 

Lance is unfazed. “If you kill me, you’ll be all alone!” 

Keith stops actively trying to ingrain Lance’s body into the soil. His hair is a frizzy halo around him, and his eyes are bright. Their chests are heaving, and Lance has a lot of fear induced sweat pooling against his lower back. Maybe Keith will pause their fight for 30 seconds so Lance can catch his breath again.

“Anything would be better than being stuck here with you,” Keith says, but his eyes flick away from Lance’s as he says it. 

“Bullshit,” Lance says. His second wind hits and he thrashes against Keith’s grip. “You hate being alone. You fucking hate it.” 

And Lance has never been so sure of anything in his life. Keith’s “lone-wolf” act stopped fooling him months ago. God knows he’s spent too much time, time that he will _never ever speak of_ , overanalyzing everything Keith does. 

He’s right. He knows it. And Keith knows it too. 

Which is why he promptly pushes off of Lance, landing on his butt in the dirt, and scoots away. 

“Fuck you,” Keith spits, collapsing against a tree. He doesn’t get up and leave, though, and Lance feels a spark of hope that maybe Keith is as tired of fighting as he is. 

“Maybe later,” Lance replies, before is brain-to-mouth filter reminds him that it’s a stupid fucking thing to say. He pulls himself up against a nearby tree, rubbing his shoulder idly. 

Keith scoffs, but doesn’t say anything that would immediately crush Lance’s soul to pieces, so he figures it’s safe to proceed.

“I say dumb shit,” Lance says. He purposefully ignores the snort that it earns. “And I say dumb shit without thinking of other people’s feelings sometimes. I messed up, I get it, and I’m _sorry_. Okay? I’m sorry.”

Keith stay silent, so Lance heaves a deep sigh and continues.

“We’re literally stuck here together. It’s gonna take us a long time to get to where we’re supposed to, and a long time to find a way back to the team. So if I promise to try harder and work with you, will you please promise the same? Pretty please? Cherry on top, and all that good stuff?”

Keith drops his face into his hands, muffling his groan between his fingers. Lance gives him time to process. After a few beats, Keith mumbles something into his hands, which Lance definitely is not capable of translating into actual human speech.

“Uh, what?” he asks, sheepish. Keith drops his hands into his lap and sighs.

“I said fine, I’ll try to work with you or whatever. Because of course the mission I get stuck on for an indefinite amount of time is with _you_.”

“Hey,” Lance says, placing a hand over his heart. “I’m not that bad.” 

Keith doesn’t answer, he just shakes his head and focuses his eyes somewhere above Lance’s head. Lance is struck by a sudden thought.

“Now that we’re working together, do you, uh, happen to remember which way camp is?”

~ 

Within hours of them stumbling back into their makeshift camp, the first burst hits. 

Lance isn’t sure what it is at first; it appears to be a wave of light steadily growing closer to them from the skyline. At a certain distance, it’s clear that the light is engulfing everything around it, and it reminds Lance of his lonelier moments at the Garrison, when he would stare at the desert for hours and watch clouds of dust storms erupt seemingly out of nowhere. The thing about dust storms is that they’re all consuming. Everything gets shrouded by them, and it’s safest to just hunker down somewhere that will protect your eyes and ears and lungs from the sediment. 

The light burst looks exactly like a dust storm, when it’s close enough, and Lance barely has enough time to push Keith towards the cave when it hits them. 

It’s not what Lance expects. 

One moment, he’s falling to the ground, with a bright haze of light enveloping everything. He’s dimly aware of Keith collapsing somewhere on the ground next to him, and then he’s not aware of anything at all.

It only lasts a split second, but the feeling of nothingness leaves his heart beating double-time. 

He’s floating, completely weightless, and then his body is pressed against something solid. If he pushes his hands against it, he can sit up. The light dims around him, and it feels like pushing through water trying to open his eyes. When he opens them, he’s in a shack. 

Not just any shack. The one in desert, that Keith brought them to after they rescued Shiro. An event that feels like it happened years and years ago. The single room of the shack is less crowded and messy than Lance remembers it being. When the door opens and a small figure steps in, Lance figures out why.

The person who has entered is Keith, but younger. Too young for Lance to have known him. He’s around ten, maybe, with hair that is even messier than Lance would’ve ever thought possible. It’s shorter, and sticks up at odd angles. He’s skinny, and could probably take someone out with how bony his elbows are alone. The door slams shut behind him. Lance tries to step forward and reach out to him, but finds that he’s frozen and that the short, confused sounds that escape his throat go unnoticed by this younger version of Keith.

Young Keith stares at the small room sullenly. Something about his entire presence seems dimmed, as if he no spirit left in him to care about what his eyes are seeing. He steps forward slowly, dragging his feet across the ground. 

Something’s wrong, it’s clear to Lance, but he’s only an observer of this moment. 

Young Keith starts to cry, quiet, muffled tears. They stream steadily down his face, leaving tracks through the layer of dust covering his skin, but he doesn’t make a sound. Instead, he rocks forward on his feet and kicks the leg of the small, wooden coffee table. It scrapes across the ground, catching the lip of an unsecured floorboard. 

Keith spots a shirt thrown over the arm the small couch and grabs it, holding it close to his chest. It’s clearly an adult’s shirt, several sizes to big for the boy’s small frame.

He collapses to the ground, still cradling the shirt. His tears grow more forceful and overwhelming. Keith kicks his skinny legs out, accidentally bumping into the same uneven floorboard with his foot. 

He’s lost for a while, in his grief. At least, that’s what Lance thinks is happening. He can only watch with unease growing in his chest the longer the young version of Keith in front of him is swallowed by his tears. 

Minutes, or maybe hours later, Keith stops. His tears stop readily coming, and he takes a few deep, steadying breaths. Almost unconsciously, he seems to tap his foot against exposed corner of the floorboard. He swipes at his face a few times, as if to clear his vision, and delicately lays the shirt back on the couch before crawling over to the floorboard on his hands and knees.

Lance almost wants to roll his eyes, because of course Keith at any age is going to investigate the “mysterious” phenomena of badly placed flooring. 

Except, when he pulls up on the corner, it comes easily. Lance peers over Keith’s head to look into the hole. There’s a securely wrapped bundle nestled in the small cubby. Because of course Keith’s childhood contains all the elements of a children’s detective novel. 

Keith pulls the bundle out and drops the floorboard back into place. He doesn’t hesitate to unwrap it, and toss away the cloth to inspect the knife that had been so carefully concealed. There’s a smaller wrapping around the hilt of the knife, but it makes it all the more recognizable to Lance: this is Keith’s Blade of Marmora knife, the thing he carries around like an external organ. The blade gleams in the light. Keith adjusts his grip on it, fumbling a little, and traces a careful finger over the sharp edge. He pokes the very sharp tip, and nicks his finger a little, watching the bead of blood well up with a soft curiosity. 

He wipes the blood on his shorts and focuses his attention on testing the weight and balance of the knife in his hand. He holds it the way Lance would hold a small bird, or his baby nephew’s head: as gently and reverently as possible. 

Lance has only a second to stare at the wonder on Keith’s young face when a bright whiteness edges in on his vision and his body begins to feel weightless again. The light is quick to consume his consciousness again. He’s only floating for a short while this time when he feels the ground become solid beneath him once more. 

This time, when he opens his eyes, he’s sprawled on the ground. Keith is across from him, the same age as him again, opening his eyes slowly. He’s just as dazed as Lance is. They both push themselves off the ground and shuffle into sitting positions. Lance rubs a spot on his head that feels a little sore.

“What was that?” he asks, but Keith shakes his head, just as bewildered. “You saw that weird cloud of light thing too, right?”

“You were a child. I saw you,” is his only reply. 

Lance nods. “Yeah, I saw you as a kid, too.” 

“What was I doing?”

“Finding your knife,” Lance replies, nodding to the object itself, still belted to Keith’s side. He touches it lightly, as if he’s unconsciously double-checking that it’s still there. “What was I doing?”

“You were with your brother, I think,” Keith says. “Somewhere outside. He was making up stories about constellations and pointing them out to you.”

“Luis,” Lance breathes. “Luis and I used to do that. Especially after Veronica got in to the Garrison.” 

“So a memory then,” Keith says. 

“Huh?” 

“It was a memory that I saw, something that actually happened,” explains Keith. 

“Oh. Yeah, I suppose. Does that mean the one of you was also a memory?” Lance thinks back to absolute hopelessness and loneliness, plain in younger Keith’s face as he cried to himself silently, and frowns. 

“Yeah,” is all Keith replies. Truly, a wordsmith. 

“So, that’s weird. We’re seeing each other’s memories, like, for realsies?” 

Keith rolls his eyes. “It would appear that way, yes.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. How is that even possible?”

“Maybe,” Keith starts. “Maybe, it’s like you said. Maybe there’s some sort of space anomaly that’s not just slowing time down, but messing with it. And that weird light wave probably had something to do with it.” 

“The weirdness of space never ends,” Lance says, scrubbing a hand over his face. Keith makes some sound of agreement.

Once they’ve made it back into the cave without further incident, Lance is desperate to break up the tension that’s formed between them. 

Instead of say something casual or normal, even, he says, “I’m sorry you’re stuck with me.”

Keith’s eyebrows form a deep “V” shape as he stares back at Lance in confusion. “Huh?”

“Well, we’re stuck here, for a lot longer than we planned. And I know I’m kind of dick and I annoy you, and I’m sorry that you’re stuck here with just me. I’ll try not to be dead weight.” He tucks himself against the wall, refusing to look up to where Keith is still standing. Lance wishes desperately that he could change out of his sweaty under-suit and let the air dry his sticky skin. Even without the chest plate and arm bracers strapped to him, all the activity had left his under-suit stuck to his skin. He’d taken his armor off days ago, and left it piled next to the supply packs, but the undersuits were hardly made for whatever climate generated by the space creature’s body-forest.

“You’re not annoying,” Keith says. His voice pulls Lance out of his distracted inner dialogue long enough to snort at the statement. Keith quickly amends it. “Well, okay, you’re annoying, but not all the time. I don’t mind that you’re the one with me, is what I’m trying to say.” 

“Really?” Lance is unable to keep himself from asking. 

Keith crosses his arms. “Yes, dumbass. We’re teammates. I…I at least know that I trust you.”

“So we’re cool?” Lance asks, desperately trying to ignore the warmth growing in his chest at Keith’s words. _I trust you_ , his brain repeats, already overanalyzing everything about the stupidly simple phrase. Lance wants to bang his head against the cave wall.

“Yeah,” Keith replies. He sits down against the opposite wall, leaning against one of the packs. 

“Cool,” Lance mumbles, and fixes his attention to the cave wall to continuing avoiding eye contact.

It had taken them a few days to find the cave, though they weren’t exactly sad to leave the hunk of metal that was once their transport shuttle behind. It wasn’t a large cave by any means, with only a good six feet between the two walls, but it was warm and deep enough to keep them mostly hidden and it was better than staying out in the open. 

Lance still isn’t sold on the close quarters, however. He flops down onto his back, peeking over at Keith. The boy in question has his gaze focused somewhere by Lance’s legs, and he’s chewing on the inside of his cheek quite avidly. Lance wants to ask what’s on his mind, but with the fight from earlier still leaving a raw feeling in his chest, he decides there’s been enough boundary pushing for today. 

Emotionally and physically exhausted, Lance tiredly fumbles through his claim to second watch and lets sleep pull him under.

 

When the pod lands and shuts off, Pidge can hardly keep herself still, bouncing on the balls of her feet. Gathered with everyone else, she can only watch and wait for the door to slide open. 

The ramp extends down from the door first, and the longer she watches it, the slower it seems to move. At last, it locks into place and the door is open the next instant. 

The person who comes bounding down the ramp is both Lance and not Lance. She has barely a split second to register how changed he is before he’s barreling into her. He picks her up with ease, spinning her in a circle.

“Pidgey! You have no idea how much we missed you guys!” He says, excitedly in her ear. He sets her down, hardly giving her a second to find her balance, before tackling the next closest person, which happens to be a very shocked and slightly teary Hunk. 

Pidge takes a moment to assess whatever the _fuck_ is happening. 

Because if she thought Lance looked older on the transmission, it’s even more obvious in person. He’s taller and broader, and though his hair is roughly the same length, it’s curly and uneven, as if someone had sheared off chunks of it with a knife—

Which causes her to look back to the ramp and see that Keith is now standing at the very top, with his hands on his hips. He looks just as different in person, and similar to Lance, has grown in numerous ways. His hair is longer than she’s ever seen it, half of it tied messily back, and Hunk was right, he does have a thin white scar cutting through one side of his mouth. 

“Lance,” he says, a little exasperated. Then he promptly starts to speak in rapid fire Spanish, and Pidge thinks her brain fries itself a little because since _when_ was that a thing?

Lance, who had been hugging both Shiro and Coran simultaneously, turns around with a sigh and quickly replies to Keith in exceedingly faster Spanish. He walks back to the base of the ramp, as he and Keith continue to converse, to the confusion of everyone except maybe Hunk, a little.

“Right, reunion over, on to business,” Lance says, at last. Keith joins Lance at the bottom of the ramp. They share a glance, and much like before with the transmission, seem to have an entire conversation through it. Keith looks back towards Pidge and the others, but Lance keeps his attention fixed on Keith as he speaks.

“Lotor is dangerous, and he’s been lying to you this whole time. As soon as he and the Princess get back, we have to take him down or at least make sure he’s secured and won’t be going anywhere.” Keith’s expression is stern, as if he’d prepared himself to fight the others on this.

Hunk mumbles a quiet, “Aw man, called it.” 

Shiro, ignoring Hunk’s comment, takes a hesitant step forward. “What do you mean he’s been lying? What has he been lying about?” 

“Well, about that,” Lance starts, scratching the back of his neck. “We actually brought someone else to explain.” 

“It’s her story to tell, anyway,” Keith affirms. “Romelle, come on out.” 

The girl who timidly appears at the pod door is small, blonde, and unmistakably Altean, with the same marks beneath her eyes that Coran and Allura have, a soft blue color. Of all the possibilities Pidge had thought of, this was never one of them. She feels herself blinking a little owlishly at the Altean who should definitely not exist, while the others around her gasp audibly.

“An Altean,” Coran says, frozen in shock. 

“She’ll explain everything,” Lance says, holding his hands up in a placating stance. “But her being Altean is directly related to it.” 

There’s a slight shimmer to the air between Lance and Keith. Before Pidge even has a second to ponder it further, there’s a flash of blue light and a grayish-blue wolf ( _?_ ) appears between the two.

“Oh, that’s another thing,” Lance says, gesturing to the new guest. “This is Kosmo.” 

“Is that a freaking wolf, dude?” Hunk asks. Coran hasn’t pulled his eyes away from Romelle, and Shiro has a hand on his forehead, as if rubbing his temples can physically stimulate his brain into processing this slew of new information faster. 

Pidge takes it upon herself to ask, “Where the _hell_ have you two even been?!” 

~

Romelle has just finished explaining all the things that the slimeball prince has been hiding from them, growing tearful as she speaks about finding the bodies of her people, suspended and drained of their quintessence. Lance, standing close enough behind her to touch, places a comforting hand on her shoulder. 

“All this time,” Coran says, voice meek. “There have been Alteans all this time.” 

“Less now than there were,” Romelle says, expression hardening. “Less than there should be. We must stop Lotor before he destroys my people even more.” 

She looks shyly at Coran. “Our people.”

“Thank you for sharing this with us, Romelle. I can’t imagine what this has been like for you, but we’ll do anything we can to help,” Shiro promises. 

Lance nods, dropping his hand from her shoulder, and steps up next to Shiro. 

“We have some ideas, to plan for whenever they’re out of the field, but you absolutely can’t let them know Keith and I are back. We have to get the drop on them,” Lance tells him. 

“Of course,” Shiro agrees, and asks to lay-out the game play, to which Lance happily obliges. As he explains his strategy, Keith drifts up beside them silently, standing close to Lance. 

Pidge should really be listening. But all she can focus on is the differences in the two boys that used to be as familiar as siblings. She hardly feels like “boy” is even an appropriate term for them anymore.

Lance was always lanky, with awkwardly long limbs and too much energy to keep from flailing them about. Now, he’s almost taller than Shiro, lean and clearly more comfortable in his own body. He reminds Pidge of a dancer: lithe and deceptively strong. He holds his body casually, loosely, though it’s clear he’s prepared to spring into motion at any given second. 

Keith, on the other hand, still appears to be wound tightly and wastes no time or energy masking his hyper-vigilance. Even though they’re back in the castle, where she would hope they’d feel safe, Pidge watches his eyes warily flit around the room every few minutes. He’s certainly grown taller as well, though Lance still has a good couple of inches on him. Nothing about his strength is hidden, either. He’s got the build of gymnast, every muscle in his body compact but powerful. 

Pidge doesn’t know what to make of them, of the time that has somehow passed between them all. When they left, Pidge and Lance had only barely been two years apart. She has no idea how much older he is now, and she hates the thought of it. There’s so much lost time to make up for, but with Lotor’s apparent betrayal, Pidge doubts there will be any opportunities. Once again, they’re all thrown into chaos. 

With all the changes about the two, Pidge isn’t surprised that they don’t act the same anymore. They have an ease between them, and it’s clear that her initial assumption was correct: this mission forced them to learn how to get along. But there’s still something off between the two, something that Pidge can’t quite pin down just yet. She watches their interactions critically, both with each other and the rest of the team. Lance is now discussing something intently with Coran and Hunk, as Keith and Shiro share a quick embrace. When he’s released, Keith drifts back over to Lance’s side, as if by instinct. Lance doesn’t even seem surprised when he turns to ask Keith something and finds him already waiting by his elbow.

“You guys still have a lot to explain,” she announces. Keith looks at her without a hint of humor in his gaze. 

“And we will, I promise. As soon as we take care of Lotor.” 

Lance nods along. “Everything that happened is…too complicated, to try and explain it all now. Lotor is our top priority.” 

The boys glance at Romelle, who sends them a tight nod in agreement. 

“Ship’s come out of the quintessence field!” Coran announces, drawing all attention in the room to the video feed showing the approaching ship. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Lance put a hand on Keith’s elbow for a brief second. The gesture appears to have a steadying affect for both of them. 

“Game time,” Lance says grimly. The ship grows ever closer.

 

Two months into their journey, Keith wakes up to the sound of Lance’s voice. He hadn’t meant to sleep, but the constant vigilance their current traveling method requires has left him exhausted. He’d volunteered to take first watch, but watching the fire throw shadows onto the cave wall across from him had left him dozing. 

It takes him a moment to realize that Lance is mumbling, and even longer to realize that he’s still sleeping. Keith stays statue-still, hardly even breathing, as his ears strain to hear what Lance is saying. 

Lance’s sleep talk is a seemingly random blend of Spanish and English. He talks for several sentences in one, before bouncing to the next. Sometimes, he replaces just a word, switching seamlessly between the two. Keith remembers just enough Spanish to comprehend what Lance is saying when he switches. 

He listens to the steady cadence of Lance’s voice long enough to be lulled into semi-consciousness once more, until the cadence is interrupted. Lance gasps, his entire body tensing, and sits up in a rush. 

“Sorry,” Lance says, breathless, when he catches Keith staring at him. 

“You good?” Keith asks quietly, hesitant to disturb the stillness that’s settled over the cave.

Lance rubs his eyes with his palms. “Fine. Just had a weird dream.” 

“You were, uh, talking a lot,” Keith says. 

Across the fire, Lance’s eyes widen. 

“Oh man, I didn’t say anything weird, right? It’s been awhile since I’ve talked in my sleep, sorry.” 

“It’s fine,” Keith replies quickly. “You didn’t say anything weird. Or at least, not in English. I couldn’t really tell in Spanish.” 

“I didn’t even realize that I sleep talk in Spanish,” he says, a little sheepish. 

“You switched a lot.” 

Lance hums in reply. Neither boy speaks for several beats until Lance clears his throat slightly.

“I dream in Spanish, sometimes. Well, I dream in both obviously, but lately there’s been a lot more. I miss using it. Hunk knows a little, but it’s not the same.” 

Keith grapples with himself, trying to find the right words to respond. It’s not a feeling he can comprehend, or relate to, but the mildly stable camaraderie they’ve created has led him to be especially more careful with his words. 

Lance, with his sensitivity to certain words and phrasing, is equally uncomfortable with silence. 

“Sorry, that was kind of weird,” Lance says hurriedly, hunching over himself. 

“It wasn’t weird,” Keith says. “I was just thinking of what to say.”

“Oh.” 

Before he even realizes it, the words are falling out of Keith’s lips.

“I, uh, had a foster mom that I was with for a couple months. She was Colombian, I think? She spoke Spanish around the house a lot. And I heard it a lot before that too. The foster family I was with before lived in El Paso,” he says, voice quiet. He’s a little surprised with himself for even sharing it, but the more he’s around this quiet, vulnerable Lance, the more it seems to pull things out of him. He’s still not sure how to feel about it. 

“Wait, you know Spanish?” Lance asks, straightening up with a surprising amount of energy for someone that’s been conscious for less than twenty minutes.

“Not much,” Keith admits, with a frown. 

“Well, how much?” Lance pulls his knees to his chest and squishes his cheek against one. 

“Probably not enough to keep up with you,” he says. “Why do you ask?”

“Hunk tries,” Lance says, eyes flitting off into the distance. “But it’s not quite the same. Sometimes…sometimes I feel like I’ll forget it. Which is dumb. It’d be like forgetting my own name or something.”

He sits up, shifting his weight awkwardly before continuing. “But I have a cousin that moved to Florida when she was young, and she speaks English like 90 percent of the time. After a while, she started getting a little rusty, y’know? And I’d just really hate to go home and not be able to keep up. It’s really stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Keith says. 

Lance shrugs. “It kind of is, but it’s fine.”

“Lance, it’s not stupid.” Keith’s voice is unrelentingly firm. “But if you’re that worried about it, maybe…maybe you could teach me?” 

Lance stares at him blankly.

“Or not. It’s up to you,” Keith says quickly, ignoring how warm his face is beginning to feel. 

“Are you serious?” Lance asks.

“I was, but I’m taking it back if you’re just going to make fun of me.” Keith crosses his arms. _So stupid_ , he thinks to himself, hating how easy it is for Lance to loosen the tight filter Keith normally keeps on himself.

“No!” Lance says, flying out of his curled position across the floor. His palms slap loudly against the rock-like material of the creature’s spine. “I’m not making fun of you! I’m just surprised.” 

Keith deflates.

“I just figured,” Keith starts, fumbling over the words slightly. He stops, trying to breathe through the frustration brewing within him. “We might as well find something to keep us busy? And I enjoyed learning it, when I was younger. It’s just an idea. You don’t have to.”

“Oh, I think I do,” Lance says. “You’re letting me _teach_ you something, which means you’re admitting that I’m better!”

“Lance,” Keith says, exasperated. “You’re literally from Cuba. Of course you’re better at Spanish.”

“Just let me have this, dude,” he crows. Keith sighs, but there’s a small smile fighting its way onto his face. 

“So you want to teach me?”

“Of course! It’ll be so much fun! And then if—“ Lance cuts himself off suddenly, and pointedly looks away from Keith. “Uh, yeah, it’ll be cool.” 

“Alright,” Keith says, ignoring the questions bubbling up at Lance’s self-interruption. His brain helpfully repeats the “if” in a resounding echo, much to his chagrin. 

“I guess I can take watch now,” Lance says, changing the subject abruptly. “You can get some sleep.” 

“Sure,” Keith says, maneuvering himself into a slightly more comfortable position against the cave wall. For the first couple of days, Lance had teased him about sleeping sitting up. Even this far in, however, it was hard to fight the Blade-ingrained instinct to always be ready to spring up into action. 

It takes a surprisingly short amount of time for Keith to reach a dozing state again. The firelight flickers against his eyelids, warming his face, and lulling him to sleep with waving patterns. Lance is tapping his fingers against the ground across from him, but rather than annoy him the way it used to, he’s grown accustomed to the pattern. Now, it adds to the calm that settles into Keith’s limbs.

At the edge of unconsciousness, he thinks he hears Lance quietly whisper, “Thank you,” but in the morning, he won’t be able to tell whether or not he dreamed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> s/o to me constantly ignoring canon. Lance's hair? curly af. Keith not knowing any Spanish? ridiculous, he's a texan boi. The several other details I messed with? *shrug*
> 
> I intended to get this up much sooner, but in between college and all the hours I'm putting in at work getting ready for black friday, I hardly had any time to write and edit. So, I thank you all for your patience and I hope you enjoyed this! I can't quite believe how great of a reaction the first chapter got, so thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading :)


	3. the interim

Allura and Lotor enter the control room in tandem. Pidge and the team are waiting expectantly, with their few surprise guests tucked away from sight.

They’re hardly a few steps into the room when Lance and Keith step forward from their hiding places near the door and activate their bayards, effectively blocking the exit. Allura and Lotor immediately turn at the movement.

“Keith, Lance,” Allura says, utterly surprised. “What is going on?” There’s an unspoken _how are you here?_ that colors her tone.

“Allura, step away from Lotor,” Keith replies. Always straight to the point. 

Allura masks it well, but Pidge can still the hint of hurt and confusion in her eyes when she spares a glance around the rest of the room. The grim expressions of the remaining occupants can’t be helping much. Allura looks to Lotor, whose face is deceptively passive. 

“Your most elusive Paladins chose to make an appearance, it seems,” he notes, sounding almost bored. There’s a sharpness to his gaze, however, as stares unflinchingly at the paladins in question.

“Someone please explain what’s going on,” Allura says, turning her scrutinizing gaze around the room. Pidge can feel the tension connecting everyone, thick as rope and hanging heavy between them all.

“Lotor isn’t who you think he is,” says Lance. His aim is steady, the sights of his bayard never wavering from Lotor’s form.

“This is ridiculous,” Allura replies. “Both of you, stand down.”

Romelle’s voice slices through the air before anyone else has a chance to speak. Her expression is hard, unyielding, as she says, “Lotor is lying to you.” 

Pidge can tell from the way her eyes widen and her jaw slackens slightly, that Allura is speechless, and quickly turns her attention to the purple menace in time to see his eyes narrow at the sight of Romelle.

“This cannot be real,” Allura says. 

“We couldn’t believe it at first either,” Lance says. “But Romelle is as Altean as you, Allura.”

“I am not the only one,” Romelle tells her. “Ask Lotor.” 

All attention returns to Lotor, whose gaze has not left Romelle’s until now. He turns to Allura, reaching out for her hands.

“I can assure you, Princess, there is an explanation for all of this if you’ll just give me the time to-“

“You knew,” Allura interrupts, pulling her hands out his reach. “You knew there were Alteans, and you didn’t tell me?” 

“Because he’s been using them for his own gain,” Pidge says, drawing Allura’s eyes to her. Lotor refuses to acknowledge anyone but Allura.

“Everything I have done, I did to save the Altean people. Without the information from my research, all that we’ve accomplished today would have never existed,” he insists. 

“You’ve killed hundreds of Alteans,” Romelle immediately replies. “You killed my family.”

Pidge watches the decision solidify on Allura’s face in an instant. Her hands ball into fists at her sides, and her eyes close tightly. There’s a familiar determination in the clench of her jaw. 

Lotor, the fool, reaches out towards Allura again and she doesn’t hesitate to grab him and flip him onto his back in a single motion. Pidge, if she wasn’t incredibly nervous about Lotor maiming someone in the next five minutes, would’ve cheered.

Lotor doesn’t stay down for long. He’s on his knees before Pidge can ever register the movement, hitting something on his vambrace, then springing to his feet. From the hangar video feed that Coran’s left displayed, everyone can see the new ship as it begins firing up.

“Don’t let him escape!” Shiro says, just as Lotor manages to dodge a swipe from Allura and send her flying. 

The room, predictably, falls to disorder. Lotor stuns Hunk with a blow to the head. Though she knows it probably won’t end well for her, Pidge charges him, and ends up on the floor within seconds. The impact knocks the wind out of her, and in the several seconds she spends trying to get her breath back, she sees Shiro clutching his head, expression pained. Coran is at his side in an instant, ushering him behind one of the paladin seats, while Romelle stands helplessly nearby.

Pidge rolls to a crouch, reaching a hand out for her bayard where it had skidded away, when she turns to see that Lance has engaged Lotor, hand-to-hand. 

The sight of it stops her in her tracks. It’s not as if Lance was terrible at hand-to-hand before, but watching him now feels like watching a completely different person. One who fights way more like Keith than Lance. 

Keith doesn’t stay out of the fray much longer. Instead of taking over for Lance, however, they tag-team Lotor, working together almost seamlessly. Pidge watches in awe, noting how good the boys are at directing Lotor in the path of each other, hardly giving him time to think. They almost fight better as a team than they do on their own.

Their entangled dance is broken when Lotor lands a solid blow to the inside of Lance’s knee, knocking him to the ground. The fall gives Lotor enough time to bolt through the doors, though Hunk has recovered and follows right on his heels. Pidge tries to stumble to her feet after them, surprised to see that Keith wasn’t the first one out the door after Lotor. 

Keith’s focus is zeroed in on Lance, who is sitting up at much as he can, clutching his leg. Keith is at his side in the span of a heartbeat.

“Go!” Lance yells, shoving Keith’s shoulder towards the door. “I’ve had worse, dumbass, now go!” 

“Damn it, Lance,” Keith mutters, though he listens all the same and disappears through the door. Pidge takes his place, lending Lance the strength and balance to stand. As he figures out his center of gravity, Pidge sees that Allura is leaning over Shiro, whose face is contorted in pain. 

“What’s wrong with Shiro?” Lance demands, somehow managing to pull Pidge along with him, even as he hobbles. 

“He just collapsed like this,” Romelle says. Shiro lets out a small groan, though he opens his pain-clouded eyes in brief acknowledgment. 

“We’ve got another problem,” Coran announces, watching the feed of Lotor’s ship as it speeds out of the hangar. 

Just in time, Hunk’s voice chimes in through his comm, “We missed him! Lotor got away!”

“Shit,” Lance says, pushing himself off of Pidge to stand on his own. He’s unsteady enough that Pidge immediately grabs him again, fearing that he’ll collapse. “Allura, lions?” 

The princess folds her mouth into a tight line, before shaking her head. 

“It’s too much of a risk to follow,” she says. “Shiro cannot pilot in this state, and neither you nor Keith has piloted a lion in well over a phoeb. I don’t trust the odds of that.” 

Lance looks ready to protest, but seems to bite his tongue at the last second, sagging back against Pidge’s shoulder. 

“Princess?” Hunk’s voice comes in through the comm again. 

“Return to the control room, immediately,” Allura replies, looking between Shiro, still breathing heavily and leaning against the seat for support, and Romelle, who stands unsure of herself just behind him. “We have much to discuss.”

 

Keith is watching the fiery comet-like ball of _something_ crash somewhere off in the forest when Lance throws out his hand out to shake his shoulder. 

“Did you see that?” he asks, ignoring the way Keith wiggles away from his hand, a makeshift bowl full of dinner still clutched in his hands. 

“It was kind of hard to miss,” Keith replies, setting his bowl down next to him. He reaches for his knife, resting on the rock next to him. “You want to check it out, don’t you?” 

“Obviously,” Lance says, with a grin, jumping to his feet. Keith rolls his eyes, pretending to be uninterested, but after nearly 6 full months on trapped on a space creature together, they both are completely aware that Keith just as interested in exploring as Lance. 

They gear up quickly and take off into the forest, following the billowing smoke indicating that whatever crashed is relatively close. 

They’re on the edge of small crater within 20 minutes, staring down at the shimmering, fluffy ball with similarly wary expressions. The ball rolls, flopping onto its back to reveal gangly ears and a voluminous tail. 

“Is that...a wolf?” Lance asks, voice low. Keith isn’t quite sure what he’s looking at, so he shakes his head, as if the world will make more sense when he looks a second time. Then again, nothing about their situation for the past 6 months has made much sense. If there’s one thing Keith knows about this place, it’s that all bets are off. 

Lance takes a hesitant step closer to the edge of the crater, just as the tiny wolf-thing gets up to its four unsteady legs. Keith resists the urge to reach out and tug Lance back. 

Across the crater, there’s a rustle out in the trees. Keith tenses, his hand naturally drifting to his blade. The rustling grows louder and more violent, until two large figures burst out of the trees and immediately climb down into the crater. 

“Lance, don’t!” Keith shouts, just as Lance takes off running, skidding down the side of the shallow crater wall. Keith groans, and follows him.

The figures are familiar; two large, crab-insect-looking creatures, with a couple spindly legs and lots of anger. He and Lance have stumbled into them twice, and though it was possible to take them out, Keith wasn’t excited by the prospect of it. 

One creature makes a beeline towards the surprise space wolf, which whimpers loudly and cowers, while the other creature continues right towards Lance. Keith, understandably, begins swearing and runs faster to catch up to Lance in time. 

The creature reaches him first, but Lance dives through its legs and army-crawls away, until it whirls on him and begins to stab the ground with its pincher-like arms. Keith can hear Lance’s yelps from several feet away as he wriggles around, attempting to dodge the sharp points. 

The second creature has already made it to the wolf, however, so Keith takes off towards it, blade at the ready. Lance has his bayard, he should be fine, right?

Keith manages to dispatch of the creature with a few strategic swipes and jabs, but before he can approach the cowering wolf, Lance cries out. Keith has never turned so quickly at a sound, but he’s also never heard Lance sound like he’s in so much pain before. 

The creature’s got him pinned between several of its limbs, and its mouth is dangerous close to Lance’s face. One of his arms is pinned at his side, while the other is grappling for something on the ground next to him.

“Lance!” Keith shouts as he runs, his feet carrying him closer before he’s even realized he’s moved. “Lance, shoot it!” 

Apparently, Lance had already been working on it, because in the next instant his bayard is activated and jammed straight into the creature’s gullet. He shoots it once, twice, three times and it rears back, letting out the most horrendous screech Keith’s ever heard before collapsing into a heap. 

Keith skids to a stop, falling to his knees at Lance’s side, and immediately begins inspecting him for injuries. There’s an ashen-sheen to Lance’s brown skin, a clear indication that something is wrong. His hair curls against his temples, sweat gluing it down to the skin. 

“What happened? What’s wrong?” Keith asks, shoving his arm under Lance’s shoulder to help him sit up. 

“Slow!” Lance yells, voice garbled by pain. He winces, leaning heavily against Keith’s shoulder. If Keith wasn’t so worried, he’d probably be freaking out right now. Each time his legs shift, Lance lets out a strangled gasp, his hands griping Keith’s arm and shoulder with a white-knuckled grip. 

“Lance, what happened?” Keith demands, growing exasperated. 

“My knee…something’s wrong with my knee. I jumped up on the stupid things back and it knocked me off. I landed on something wrong,” Lance answers. His tears track steady lines down his face. “Holy crow, that hurt.”

“Can you walk?” 

The way Lance bites his lip, staring at his limp leg with an unreadable expression, immediately alerts Keith to the full extent of his injury. Despite this, Lance still says, “Yeah, sure. I can try.” He proceeds to push off Keith as leverage to stand. 

“No way,” Keith says, holding Lance in place. “I can see that you’re lying.” 

“I don’t know what else to do!” Lance yells. “It’s not like I have an option.” 

Keith rolls his eyes. “I’ll just carry you.”

“Nu-uh,” Lance says immediately, pulling out of Keith’s grip. “No way! You’re not carrying me the whole way back!” 

“How else are you gonna get back?” Keith asks. His frustration is growing by the second. 

“It’s not that bad. I can totally walk,” Lance says. “Or I’ll figure it out, because anything is better than you _carrying_ me.” 

“Would you just let me help you for once?” Keith groans. 

Six months ago, Lance would have continued to argue until they both got frustrated and sick of each other. Now, Keith can already see the fight draining out of his eyes. Everything else about living on this hell-scape space creature body is potentially life threatening. They’ve both learned that it’s a waste of energy to try to combat each other as well.

“Fine,” Lance relents, sinking back against Keith’s side. “But just know that I’ll hate it the whole time.”

Keith snorts. “I’m sure you’ll remind me every couple of minutes anyway.” 

He readjusts his stance in order to heft Lance up in his arms. The transition jostles Lance’s leg, driving a pained yell out of him. Keith winces in apology, and turns in the direction of their camp, trying to minimize the amount of bouncing Lance will have to put up with. When he glances down, Lance’s face is still considerably paler than normal. 

“If I faint,” Lance says, screwing his eyes shut as Keith accidentally moves him too much. “You’re not allowed to make fun of me.” 

Keith attempts to lighten the mood, and distract them both, by saying, “You’re no fun.” 

He’s only half-way through the sentence when Lance’s eyes roll back into his head and sags limply against Keith’s chest. Keith’s heart stutters over the next beat.

“Uh, Lance? Lance, can you open your eyes?” he asks. When there’s no response, Keith panics once more, hoping that he can get back to camp fast enough for Lance.

~ 

He forgets about the wolf, their whole reason for venturing out, until it shows up at their cave entrance the next day. 

It’s a small, scrappy thing. It definitely looks more like a wolf than anything else, but it’s blue with odd fur markings, and clearly very young. Keith is pouring Lance another dose of medicine when he sees a shimmer near the door, and hears the pattering of paws against the ground. 

Lance is hopped up on painkillers, and thus, not consciously present for the moment. Keith stares at the mouth of the cave, watching as the wolf shuffles into view, hugging the cave wall. It drifts in slowly, even as Keith maintains eye contact with it, getting ever-closer to the food rations. 

They’d been drying the meat of a random forest creature for days. Keith watches as the wolf reaches the strips hanging low enough to the ground for it to reach.

“Don’t-“ Keith starts, throwing himself forward just as the wolf snatches a piece and bolts straight back out of the cave. “You’re kidding me.”

Lance’s heads lolls around the pillow, drawing Keith’s attention back to the task at hand. Lance says something vaguely along the lines of, “Wha’s wrog?”

“Nothing, just getting you more stuff,” Keith answers with the shake of his head. He returns to pouring more of the orange, gelatinous liquid in a small cup. He glares at the empty mouth of the cave as he tucks the cup into Lance’s hand. 

“This th’ good suff?” Lance asks, without opening his eyes. 

“Yeah, it’s the heavier painkiller,” Keith replies, tucking the bottle back into the med kit. 

Given that they had no idea how long they’d be stuck here, they had started rationing the meds a few months ago. Coran had only been able to send them with so much. From what they’d had to use so far, most of the medicines had contained some sort of regenerative component, like a diluted and liquefied form of the healing pods. Lance would heal slowly, but it was better than nothing at all. 

“Ugh,” Lance says, but chokes the barely-liquid substance down anyway. He shudders as he hands the cup back. 

“How does your knee feel?”

“Bad,” Lance says, though it sounds more like “Bah.”

The painkiller takes him back under. Keith sighs, sitting back against the packs and crossing his arms as watches Lance’s breathing, his chest hidden under a thin blanket, before he even realizes he’s doing it. He shakes his head, like it’ll actually ever clear his thoughts, and focuses instead on the mouth of the cave in case the little thief comes back.

~

A month later, Keith walks into the cave after a full-day hunting excursion to find Lance passed out, the wolf tucked into a ball against his side. 

He drops the game sack. “Are you serious.”

Lance stirs at his voice, rubbing his eyes as he sits up. His knee is substantially healed, though the medicine still leaves him lethargic, and subsequently, stir-crazy. 

“Oh, hey. You’re back,” he says, before promptly yawning loudly. The wolf tucks itself closer to his side. 

“Seriously?” Keith says. 

Lance squints at him. “What?” 

“I’m gone for one day, and you let it in?” Keith can hardly keep the exasperation out of his voice as he gestures at the wolf. 

“He’s lonely and needs love!” Lance immediately says, indignant as he hovers over the young animal.

“He keeps stealing our food!”

“He also needs fed.”

“Lance, no.” Keith says, walking closer and preparing himself to shoo the raggedy little creature out. 

“You can’t. I love him. He’s my son,” Lance says. He picks up an empty cup and promptly throws it at Keith, who barely manages to swat it away in time. 

“He’s a wild animal.” Keith crosses his arms over his chest, but Lance is starting to put on his begging face and Keith already feels his resolve wavering. 

_Stupid Lance. Stupid Lance and his stupid pout. Stupid Lance with his stupid eyes and mouth and stupid hair that has started to grow longer and curlier and frame his stupid face._ Keith crumbles.

“Fine!” 

Lance lets out a whoop and plants a wet kiss on the drowsy, confused wolf’s forehead. 

~

Keith isn’t sure how he found himself here, three weeks later, chucking a stick in the hopes that the wolf will instinctively know what to do. 

_Cosmo_ , as Lance insists on calling him, looks the least bit entertained. Keith sighs, gesturing out towards the stick. 

“Go get it,” he says, waving his hands. Kosmo stays sitting, though he wags his tail across the ground a few times. 

From behind him, Lance lets out a snort. 

Keith rounds on him, frustrated. 

“What? I’m trying!” 

“Oh, you’re definitely trying. I’ll give you that much,” Lance says, resting his chin in his palm and smiling lazily. He’s sitting on a rock near the cave entrance, stretching out his legs in front of him. His bad knee is slightly more bent, but the swelling has at last returned to normal. 

Keith ignores his comment to retrieve the stick. He returns to his original position, feeling the eyes of his two companions on him the whole way. 

“Okay, buddy,” he says to Kosmo, shaking the stick in what he hopes is an enticing manner. “One more try.”

He throws it again, a little closer this time. Kosmo’s reaction is exactly the same for the first few seconds, until his launches himself at the stick. Keith is ready to actually cheer, then notices that Kosmo isn’t actually fetching anything, and instead is ripping the stick up into tiny bits. 

Lance laughs hard enough to draw Keith’s attention again, and then laughs even harder when he sees the pout on Keith’s face. 

“It’s not even that funny,” Keith says, furrowing his brows.

“No, it’s not. You just look so cute when it doesn’t work,” he replies, with a soft smile. 

They both process the words and freeze. Lance slaps a hand over his mouth. 

Keith blinks at him a few times, then slowly starts to smirk. “You just called me cute.”

“No!” Lance says, rushing to his feet and turning to escape into the cave. He’s not quite at his max speed from before, so it’s more of a power-walk than a run, though not for lack of effort. 

Keith follows. “You did.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to!” 

“Stop running away!” 

“No way,” Lance replies, circling around the fire pit. He picks up one of the packs, holding it in front of his face. “I never meant to say that out loud.” 

“You didn’t?” Keith says, freezing in place. Lance drops the pack just enough to reveal his eyes and laughs incredulously. 

“Why would I plan on that? I like all my limbs attached to my body, thanks.” 

“I haven’t removed them yet,” Keith points out. 

“Yet,” Lance repeats. 

Keith sighs. “Can we talk about this like adults, maybe?” 

“Absolutely not,” Lance replies. 

“Lance, I’m not mad.” 

The pack drops a little further. “You’re not?”

“No,” Keith says, groaning in frustration. “I just. I just want to know if you were serious.”

Lance’s hands go slack and the pack drops to the ground.

“Are you making fun of me?” he asks. 

“No, Lance.”

Lance shifts uneasily. “I wasn’t kidding.”

“Oh.” Keith feels his cheeks flood with heat and refocuses his gaze on the ground. 

“Are...are you blushing?” Lance asks, with a hint of wonder coloring his voice.

“No! Shut up, Lance,” Keith yells. He spins on his heel and bolts. Kosmo is sprawled out on the ground, in the remains of his stick, but he perks up when Keith comes running. 

His cheeks feel impossibly hot, but as peals of Lance’s laughter drift out of the cave to his ears, he feels some of that warmth migrate into his chest. 

 

As Hunk and Keith return to the control room, Shiro is able to sit up completely and his eyes grow brighter, more alert. 

“Headache,” he explains, with a frown. Coran mirrors the expression.

“They’re getting much worse. Might need to do a scan,” he says. Shiro nods. 

Keith comes crashing through the door first, bee-lining for Lance, who’s still leaning slightly on Pidge’s shoulder. 

“How bad?” Keith asks, stopping in front of Lance and grabbing his shoulders. Lance picks himself off of Pidge, leaning further into Keith’s grip. 

“Not as bad as it could be. Just a little sore, nothing twenty minutes in a healing pod won’t fix,” Lance says, grinning slightly. Keith does not appear reassured. 

“Lance, where you injured?” Allura asks, stepping closer to them. 

“More like an old injury that Lotor took advantage of,” Lance explains. “It’s really not that bad.” 

He aims the last bit at Keith, who promptly rolls his eyes and throws Lance’s arm over his shoulders. 

“Let’s go to the common room, so everyone can at least sit.” Keith doesn’t even wait to see if anyone follows, just leads Lance towards the door with surprising gentleness. 

“Am I hallucinating that?” Hunk mock-whispers to Pidge. She shakes her head. 

“If you are, I am.” 

~

Keith helps Lance settle into a nook of the couch as Hunk guides Shiro down to the adjacent couch. 

Allura and Coran have gathered close to Romelle, asking quiet questions off near the doorway. Allura holds one of Romelle’s hands in both of hers, as they all murmur. Pidge watches them as she sinks into the cushions next to Shiro. Hunk sits on Lance’s only available side, given that Keith has wedged himself in on the other, close enough that their legs are pressed together. 

“So,” Lance starts. 

“So,” Hunk repeats. “We have questions.”

“Yes, right,” Lance answers, rubbing a hand over his face. He and Keith share a glance. “Should we start from the beginning?”

“I suppose,” Keith shrugs. Then he looks across the couches to where Pidge and Shiro are sitting. “We were stuck on a space whale of some sort for two years.” 

The other couch residents all exclaim variations of “What the hell?” just as Lance sighs loudly. 

“That’s-That’s not even the beginning. But I guess we can roll with that.” 

Keith shrugs. “The whole story would take too long. I figured it’d just be easier to get the important details out.” 

“No, yeah, that works,” Lance says.

“Did you say two years?” Hunk asks, voice higher and more pinched than usual. 

“Please explain that part,” Shiro agrees. 

Before either boy can open their mouths to explain, Pidge interjects. “Assuming you followed the coordinates, which led to a planetary anomaly, by the way, I’m guessing the time change was caused by some sort of dark matter or celestial body.” 

She punctuates her statements by pushing her glasses back up her nose. Keith and Lance blink at her. 

“Uh, yeah, that’s exactly it,” Keith says. “How did you know that?”

“You two were gone for months. You don’t seriously believe that I would do research to try and figure out where you where?” she asks, almost a little insulted by the thought. 

“We didn’t mean to worry you guys, really,” Lance says. “But there were to extenuating circumstances.” 

“Two years?” Hunk asks. “You were seriously there for two years?” 

“At least, from what we could keep track of.” Lance reaches a hand out to pat Hunk’s shoulder.

“That would certainly explain the change in appearance,” Shiro says. He’s clearly exhausted, his shoulders sagging against the back of the couch, but still straining to participate. 

“And behavior,” Pidge adds.

“I know. We’re super cool and mature now, right?” Lance asks, sliding a hand under his chin and posing. 

“I didn’t say that,” Pidge says. Before, it would’ve made Lance squawk in denial. Now, he just laughs, a full-bellied sound.

A blue shimmer appears in the air behind the couch, and Kosmo-the-space-wolf appears. He trots up to the back of the couch and buries his nose in Lance’s hair. 

“Oh, look. Someone decided to stop hiding.” Lance laughs, reaching a hand up to ruffle the fur between Kosmo’s ears. The wolf pants at him, then shifts his attention over to Keith, who also reaches up to pet him. 

“That also raises questions,” Pidge points out. 

“Right. Kosmo, our beloved companion. He crashed onto the space whale one night, near our camp, and we rescued him from some weird space-whale-creatures,” Lance says. “Keith didn’t want to keep him at first, but we wore him down in the end.” 

“And the teleporting just sort of happens?” Keith adds, though he sounds just as unsure about it as Pidge feels.

Hunk drops his head into his hands. 

“I’m trying to process this. But it’s all so much. How did this even happen? How are you actually two years old than me now?”

“Weird, right?” Lance says.

“I missed two of your birthdays, dude,” Hunk pouts. 

“We’ll have to make up for it,” Lance tells him, reaching out a pinky finger to him. Hunk responds immediately, wrapping his pinky around Lance’s tightly.

“Make up for what?” Allura asks, appearing between the couches suddenly. Everyone jumps at the sudden addition. Romelle and Coran are side-by-side with her. “I apologize for missing the explanation.” 

“No worries, Allura. You had some Altean bonding to do,” Lance tells her, smiling softly. Allura returns a small smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Yes, it would appear we did.” 

She and Coran find cushions on the couch with Pidge, while Romelle stands awkwardly in the middle. Lance reaches around Keith to pat a free cushion, and she easily settles in. Part of Pidge is surprised that Lance hadn’t made Keith move over just to fit Romelle in next to him, but that’s not this Lance. This Lance is so clearly different. 

And Keith is too. In the past, he would have easily knocked Lance’s arm away from him. Now, he looks nonplussed by the intrusion into his personal space. 

Pidge narrows her eyes at two. What is she missing about them?

She tunes them out slightly, as Lance and Keith re-explain everything to Allura and Coran. It doesn’t appear that Lotor will be returning tonight, and it seems to lull them all into an exhausted haze. Lance yawns loudly. 

“We should try to get some sleep while we can,” Hunk says, fighting off a yawn of his own. 

“Absolutely,” Allura agrees. “But be aware that we might need you ready at any moment.”

“And perhaps I should take Lance and Shiro to the infirmary first,” Coran adds. The two in question nod and murmur their agreement. 

Everyone drifts off to their separate corners. Allura takes Romelle to her room, while Keith trails after Lance and Shiro as they both stumble down the hall. Kosmo stays close on their heels. 

Pidge follows Hunk back to their rooms, though she knows it’s a fruitless endeavor. As she passes Lance’s room, she realizes that no one has touched it since he left. For Keith’s, its been even longer. She wonders if it’ll even feel natural for them to sleep there anyway.

~

Hours later, when she’s inevitably failed at sleeping, Pidge creeps out to her lab to work on her project. She passes the common room on the way, and notices that the door has been left ajar, and there’s a rustling sound from inside. 

She peers in, and in the dim glow of the castle’s “nighttime” lights, can see three figures grouped together on the floor between the couches. 

Pidge can’t fight her curiosity, though she’s pretty sure she knows who the figures are, and slinks into the room to inspect. 

She doesn’t expect Lance to be awake, but as she gets closer, he props himself up on an elbow and holds a finger to his lips. His hair sticks up in every direction. Pidge recognizes the hairstyle from her own nights spent tossing and turning. 

“Hey,” she whispers. 

“Hey,” he whispers back. The share a private smile, the camaraderie of all insomniacs uniting them, and Pidge studies the other two figures.

They’ve both got a few blankets on the ground and around them, but not enough that Pidge can’t see that Keith is curled up on the ground in the space next to Lance, while Kosmo folds himself in a crescent shape on Keith’s other side. Lance is wide-awake, but the sleeplessness has apparently not bothered the other two. Kosmo huffs in his sleep and kicks out a leg, barely managing to miss Keith’s face. 

“Didn’t want to make Kosmo choose who to sleep with?” Pidge asks. Lance chuckles, but shakes his head. 

“Nah. Bed’s feel too weird. We’re all used to a cave floor,” he explains. 

“Gotcha.” 

They’re both silent for a few moments, each one growing a bit more awkward than the last. 

“Well,” Lance starts, just as Pidge blurts, “I’m heading to my lab, so.” 

They both start laughing, trying to muffle the sound with closed lips and hands and blankets. 

“Right, well, don’t stay up too late,” Lance says. She thinks she sees him wink. 

“You too.” 

He waves at her lazily, and she takes her signal to head back out to the hall and resume her trek. 

Something stops her at the door, though. A feeling of warmth in her chest. She hadn’t realized how glad she would be to see the boys again, even considering the revelation about Lotor that came with them. 

“I’m really glad you guys are home,” Pidge says, looking back over her shoulder. 

“Us too,” Lance replies. Pidge watches him for a moment longer, though from his shifting, it appears that he’s settling in for another attempt at sleep. 

It almost looks as though he curls himself up close to Keith’s back, but Pidge isn’t entirely sure that it’s not just a trick of the shadows. 

 

It hard to count the days when there’s no cycle of daytime and night to follow, but by Lance’s guess, they’ve been on the creature for ten months when Keith kisses him. 

He does it randomly one day over dinner, apropos of nothing. In fact, he does it when Lance is in the middle of explaining a cute thing that Kosmo had done earlier that day, while Lance was going through his stretches. 

It’s hardly a kiss, really. Lance’s mouth is wide open when Keith leans over and presses his lips to it, and he’s pretty sure that their teeth knock together a little bit because of it. But it doesn’t stop his brain from immediately shorting out. 

When he can think again, Lance asks, “What was that for?”

“Uh,” Keith says. The fire paints his cheeks orange and red, adding to the blood that’s already flooding the area. “I guess I just felt like it?”

“Oh,” Lance says. 

For a moment they just stare at each other. 

Then, Lance asks, “Would you feel like doing it again?” 

Keith’s immediate response is, “Yeah, probably.” 

Lance sets his bowl down on his other side, then scoots the extra few inches to where Keith is sitting. He cups Keith’s face in his hands lightly, giving him a chance to change his mind and pull away. When Keith leans into his hands, Lance doesn’t waste anymore time. 

He fits his mouth against Keith’s, putting only a light amount of pressure into his kiss. Keith, presumably, disagrees with this tactic and tangles his hands in the material covering Lance’s shoulders and _yanks_. Lance’s noise of surprise is muffled between them.

Their second kiss is, objectively, better than their first. It somehow manages to be softer, even as they scramble to pull each other closer, almost desperately. 

Lance doesn’t expect the kiss to last as long as it does, but at some point it becomes two kisses, then three, then four. Now that he’s here, it doesn’t make much sense to be doing anything else. Keith’s lips are chapped, but still full and soft against his. He slides a hand up Keith’s jaw, to cradle his head, cupping around his ear. 

It’s clear that neither one of them has done this in quite some time, if ever, but Lance is all the more enthralled by it. 

The kisses they trade become messier, more open-mouthed. As soon as he feels the temptation to swipe his tongue across Keith’s lower lip, Lance pulls back. Keith follows him, chasing a few softer, more chaste kisses. They break apart, still clinging to each other. Lance pulls back just enough to watch how sluggishly Keith’s eyes reopen. 

“So,” Lance says, quietly expelling the word into the space of their shared breath. 

“So,” Keith replies. 

“We should probably, uh, talk. About this.” 

Keith sighs, releasing his hands from the material of Lance’s under suit. He leans back enough that Lance’s hands fall back down to his lap. 

“Yeah, alright. Let’s talk.” 

Lance clears his throat. “So, was that okay? For me to do?”

“I told you I’d do it again,” Keith answers. “I thought it was pretty okay. It was more than okay.”

“Right,” Lance says. His fiddles his hands together in his lap, staring at the overlap of his finger to avoid looking at the boy next to him. “And you’d be interested in continuing to?”

“Lance,” Keith says insistently. He waits until Lance drags his head up to meet his eyes. “If you’re asking me if I want this to be something, then the answer is yes.” 

“Oh, thank God,” Lance says in a rush of air. He takes the opportunity to lean in and kiss him again. 

Keith returns it easily, angling his head slightly. It’s not quite enough for them to avoid bumping noises, so Lance adjusts his own angle until they fit together just right. A thought occurs to him so suddenly that he pulls away mid-kiss.

“Just to be clear, we’re both talking about dating, right? Like this is us agreeing that this is a committed thing, yeah?”

“ _Yes_ , Lance,” Keith says. His voice sounds exasperated, but Lance can see the fondness in his eyes, in the slight curve of his lips. Keith pulls him back in, and Lance lets him.

~

They discover, relatively quickly, that Kosmo does not like to share. 

He finds every opportunity to interrupt them; pressing his cold nose against their faces when they kiss, sprawling in the space between their sleep spots, weaving in between them when they go _anywhere_.

They’ve officially been together for less than two months. The whole point of this stage in the relationship is to be totally captivated by one another, and to awkwardly try and figure out how to be affectionate. Lance just wants to be able to reach across the small gap between them, snake his hand into Keith’s, and then inevitably have to adjust three different times until they find a comfortable position. 

He can’t even hold his own boyfriend’s hand, because their pet space wolf is too busy pouting about it, for Quiznack’s sake!

Lance hits his limit one night when he’s making dinner. He asks Keith to pass him some of the substitute vegetables they’ve been scavenging to through in their stew. Keith retrieves the requested item, takes two steps closer, when Kosmo teleports into the empty space between them. Despite the fact that he’s barely mid-thigh height, Kosmo launches himself at Keith and sends him sprawling. 

Lance drops their substitute spoon straight on the ground. 

“Please tell me you also saw that.”

Keith doesn’t move his saucer-wide eyes away from the animal panting over his face, but nods.  
“He just teleported, right? That’s an actual thing that just happened, that we both witness with our own eyes,” Lance continues. He’s not even sure he can be upset anymore.

“That doesn’t seem too…normal.”

Lance laughs. Even to his own ears, it sounds a little hysterical. 

“Not only do we have a pet space wolf,” he says, cackling. “We have a _magic_ space wolf.”

~

Kosmo’s new found talent appears to be the perfect solution to his need for attention. 

Lance spends a few hours every day training and with him. They both enjoy the opportunity to stretch out their legs and run around, Lance especially. Within a week of their new activity, Lance’s knee sees an increase in mobility and a decrease in discomfort. Kosmo is also excited to have all of Lance’s attention on him for hours at a time. 

Keith still feeds Kosmo all his meals, which means that the wolf is still slightly more inclined to follow him anywhere. But Lance was still his first love, and it shows in the blatant adoration on the animal’s face any time Lance is within a few steps of him. 

The training takes longer than Lance originally anticipates, but training a dog-that-isn’t-a-dog and can also teleport away from you at any given moment is a lot different that training a dog in a fenced in yard. The older Kosmo grows, the more spirited and stubborn he gets too.

“I blame you,” Lance says one night, just as he and Keith settle in to sleep. They’ve pushed their blankets closer around the back edge of the cave, so that their faces are aligned. Kosmo, even though he’s passed out near Keith’s feet, twitches at Lance’s words as if he knows it’s about him.

“What?” Keith asks, scrunching his face up in confusion. Lance refuses to be distracted by how endearing it is. “How is it my fault?”

“You think he picked up those bad habits from me? No way!” 

“And so he automatically has to get them from me? How is that fair?” 

“Who else would he learn it from?” Lance says, propping himself up on an elbow so he has the freedom to gesticulate as much as he wants. 

“Why did he have to learn it from anyone? Maybe it’s just his personality,” Keith replies. He’s not even pretending to be annoyed. Instead, he’s just gazing up at Lance with a goofy look on his face. Pure sap. Lance’s chest clenches painfully when he remembers that it’s all directed at _him_.

“No creature develops that much sass on their own, Keith,” Lance says. Keith snorts. 

“Well, you’re the one who trains him. Fix it.” 

“I can’t, it’s already too late. Now I have to put up with both of you. For life.” 

“Put up with, yeah right.” Keith mumbles. “You chose this.” 

“Yeah,” Lance agrees, softening slightly. “I did.” 

Keith tries to hide a small smile in the corner of his blanket, but Lance sees it anyway and smiles even wider. 

Then, as if to pitch in his own commentary and maintain his record of profoundly ruining any tender moment between them, Kosmo farts in his sleep. 

~

“Keith! Come out here!” 

Keith startles awake to the sound of Lance’s frantic yelling. He’d been dozing in the cave while they trained, but now he’s cursing himself for it. He rushes to his feet and out of the cave, already brandishing his knife. 

Lance and Kosmo are standing calmly in the middle of their campsite, each staring expectantly towards Keith.

“What’s wrong?” Keith asks, frantically searching the surroundings for a hint of danger.

“Oh,” Lance says, a little sheepish. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just wanted to show you a new trick we figured out.” 

Keith’s body completely drains of any and all adrenaline-fueled energy. 

“Jesus, Lance,” he says, dragging a hand over his face. “Maybe a little calmer next time?” 

“Absolutely, my bad,” Lance says, holding a hand over his heart for a moment. “You do still want to see the trick though, right?”

“I might as well,” Keith replies, still trying to convince his heart to beat normally again. 

“Right, okay, cool,” Lance says, turning to Kosmo with jittering, barely-continued glee. 

Kosmo has only barely reached the height of Lance’s hip, but it’s the perfect position for Lance to reach his hand down and bury it in the scruff of his neck. 

At Lance’s sharp whistle, Kosmo teleports the two several feet away from their original standing position, then teleports himself to Keith. Lance tucks into a roll, comes up on his good knee pretending to shoot at imaginary enemies (all the while making ridiculous gun sound effects), until Kosmo reappears back at Lance’s side and teleports them to a new position.

“Cool, right?” Lance says, waving his arms frantically. “Think of how helpful it’ll be in combat!”

“Alright, that was pretty good,” Keith admits. 

“I know,” Lance says, strutting over to Keith. “You should consider yourself pretty lucky that you have a boyfriend this cool.” 

Keith pushes Lance away from him lightly. Kosmo appears next to them, panting happily, and perking his ears up at their banter. 

“Don’t make me take it back,” Keith jokes. 

Lance pretends to swoon, falling dramatically against Keith, who automatically opens his arms to catch him. As soon as he’s comfortably settled against Keith’s chest, Lance grins up at him. “You can’t fool me. You’re a big ol’ softie.”

Keith smirks down at him, leaning in closer. Lance blinks rapidly a few times, his eyes sluggishly closing as he cranes his neck up to reach Keith’s face. 

Keith drops his hands and steps back, still smirking as Lance goes down with a yelp. 

Sprawled on the ground, Lance is a little dazed when he says, “Was that revenge for scaring you earlier? Or was it because I called you soft?”

“I’ll let you figure that one out,” Keith replies, spinning back towards the cave. 

Still on the ground, Lance calls out, “Second one it is!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *slaps roof of chapter* this bad boy is so much longer than intended.
> 
> Originally, this fic was going to be done relatively quickly, and I also expected it to cap out around 20k. Clearly, that's not going as planned. I have to apologize for taking so long with the past two updates; this is growing into much more of a monster than I anticipated. I also realized while writing this that I don’t write a lot of romance stuff anymore. For all my writing classes and workshops, I genuinely just turn a bunch of sad, introspective literary fictionSo if the romance (especially the kiss) seems weird, it’s definitely because I’m out of practice. 
> 
> All that being said, now that my hell semester is finally over, I can promise that the next chapter will be up within a week! 
> 
> As always, thank you so very much for your patience, kudos, comments, and subscriptions.


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